Have you ever watched one of those action flicks, like John Wick or Die Hard? You know when the hero is a super amazing shoot ‘em up karate swinging type, but who also gets his ass kicked over and over and over again, to the point where you look at your boy/girl friend/husband/wife and kind of roll your eyes because, seriously, this guy should be dead by now, but he just keeps getting up and going? Then, before you know it…there is a sequel! And you are thinking WHAAAT?? Shouldn’t that guy still be in physio and going to trauma counselling, but instead, a new threat has been discovered, so he is called back into action.

I actually love these kinds of action movies. The muscle rippling, sweaty fantasy of it all. The mindless destruction and interminable spirit of an unstoppable man on a mission. Watching these guys push through ridiculous amounts of physical pain, destroy perfectly good cars, and buildings, and planes and roads, and well, you get the picture….they are superheroes. (Or psychopathic criminals…it’s a fine line people).

So, why am I talking to you about my crushes on Bruce Willis and Keanu Reeves? Because today I woke up and thought about blogging again. I stopped last year, because, well….life. The ongoing struggle I have with my anxiety, depression and my spirituality. My life story seemed to take on the structure of a sequel to an action movie.

You see, I wrote my book, then, lots of shitty things happened, and then, the worst thing of all happened. I lost faith in my spirituality. What the f@#k?! I just wrote a book about how I used spirituality to heal my sexual abuse scars and then it all started to feel wrong. The fantasy I had about feeling all empowered in my healing, showing up as a beacon of inspiration for the sexually abused and women’s empowerment just kind of withered beneath my inability to make up my mind and focus on one thing.

FEAR, baby, big fat fear. What is this new hell I have found?

That is the reality is being highly creative and living with trauma/emotional instability. I am tormented by so many ideas, an over-thinking mind, coupled with family life and the realisation that I am not nearly so brave as I thought I was found me crashing into a big fat block about what to do next with my life….and so TA DA…I manifested a crippling spiritual crisis and became trapped back in the cyclic pattern that I have been fighting for years to heal.

And that is what brought me to my crazy superhero men and there all fighting sequels. Those men remind me or myself…they had a mission. They fought hard and long, through seemingly insurmountable odds, to emerge, somewhat battered and bloodied, yet victorious. Mission accomplished. Nemesis defeated!!

Or…maybe not?

Where do action heroes go to die? They don’t, they find another battle in the never-ending war. Sure, I kicked a big goal, I honed my skills and created a stronger, more stable fortress. I am now living more closely to my real self than ever before but, I had no back-up plan. No Plan B. Nothing but the void that is left when you fail to plan. You see…my life right now is the script-writing phase of the sequel to The Magic and The Mire. In my faith and trust, I left that plan B up to the universe, only to discover that what the universe had planned for me was to fall further into the rabbit hole of self sabotage, self doubt, procrastination. It wanted me to test that faith and those skills some more and remind me of that good old spiritual lesson from Shrek…layers. I am the Onion.

Look here it is. I look back now and think about why I wrote The Magic and the Mire. In amongst all the noble reasons for it, foremost, I wrote it for myself. To try to explain my life to myself and to see if it made any sense. And by the end of the writing of it, things did make sense to me. But it also scared the shit out of me too. I am proud of the book, but in reality, the process allowed deeper and deeper layers of pain to emerge. Some old wounds become scarified and toughened. Others gaped open, exposing cancerous wounds beneath that I did not even know were there. A new new level of self awareness had begun and it sent me back into the rumination of spiritual seeking. I was vividly reminded that everything is in a cycle. The vortex spun around and returned me to the shadow land with those new fears to confront.

So when all the gurus were telling me that I should be on the bandwagon marketing and creating more content, I actually went into deep spiritual, personal and emotional crisis. I had more work to do. This kind of work never really goes away. I was back busily navigating the path again, trying to determine whether I had just succeeded or failed. (Jury is still out on that btw).

That sounds kind of excusey, I know (I just made up that word…he he, poetic licence and all that) which leads me to my second confession. I wanted to be able to find a way beyond blogging to help out. To provide some kind of teaching/healing/spiritual process that I can use to help connect to and support other like-minded souls, like you my lovely readers (And to provide myself with a source of income now that I don’t have one …What, you mean I don’t get paid for writing…shocker!) I am working on it…things are brewing, they just still need some more marinading time. Besides I’ve been too busy bingeing on Netflix, contemplating time travel and quantum physics, being a mum, observing the crazy world around, meditating and generally hanging about drinking cappuccino’s.

I have done one nice thing for you though. I have created this super cute PDF. It is a script for one of my Chakra Balancing Meditations. You can read it through and get yourself all nice and energetically balanced, plus I have put in a place for you to write your thoughts and feelings or draw some imagery…whatever comes up for you!Just sign up in that box over on the right there >>

So, for now, I’ll keep writing the occasional blog, because writing helps me a lot. Whether y’all read it or not. The process of putting my fingers on the keys and sorting through the thoughts in my mind and creating a piece of work really helps me navigate my life. So my work and service for now will remain in these words on the page. Next, I am going to work on some more personal/spiritual development stuff and make a new plan. Time swallow the red pill and re-enter The Matrix a see what comes up…and Oh No…Here comes a marketty bit (ha ha another ‘non-real’ word…just doing that ‘write like I talk’ thing).

If you have not read my books, I would love to invite you to do it….I have had a few people remind me lately that they are pretty good. So if you are in Australia and you click here you will go straight to the shop on my website. I can package up The Magic and The Mire and send it to you for a totally affordable $15 including shipping. (Or download an EBook for a measley $9.99 and you don’t even have to wait…nice!)

If you are not in Australia, you can still go to the website, but the shipping is more, so even easier, you can find me on Book Depository, or Amazon just click on the links, search Megan Freeland and voila, there I am.

Hey guys, it’s me. She of the erratic blog writing. I am back with my latest musings about how my life has looked lately.

The last few months have been totally crap, horrid and sucky. I got so very very lost. Honestly, I don’t really think I have found my way back entirely. But I can finally see the sun shining through the dark forest of tangled woods that has become my soul, and I have finally felt like a can take a deep cleansing breath again.

For folks like me, the pain of this world is suffocating, yet somehow intoxicating. The flow of its horribleness hypnotic. It will put you into a trance that pounds your mind with a magnetic pulsing litany of fear and doubt and struggle….I’ve been calling it ‘apathy addiction.’ Frozen in a state of abject disinterestedness, because to feel too far into the world around is to know true powerlessness.

When I set out on the journey to write, I was filled with the conviction of what I wanted to do. I had always wanted to write a book. I jumped into a vortex that lead me into a parallel dimension of life. I allowed myself to dive deeply into myself, my psyche and my subconscious. I literally held my life up for examination and shook the shit out of it. I love how writing makes me feel….I am rather bizarrely, inspired by my own writing. I know that sometimes it is complete drivel and crap…but sometimes, hidden in amongst it all, come moments of clarity and brilliance. And it is in those moments I feel like I am made whole. The swirling pieces of me and my vision of the world unite in a place of such perfection and purity that is sends my soul exploding around the universe, dancing among stars and breathing galaxies into being. The addiction and release of creative flow.

But, sometimes in the release, you find that shadow dance you entered so gracefully leaves you lost, blind and broken down again. I felt defeated and confused, because after I wrote my book, I didn’t know what to do. I got really lost in the noise of the new wild and wacky world that is the 20 teens. The rise of the entrepreneur. Of ‘live your life online’ and ‘be your own brand’ and sell your ‘self’ as a valuable commodity…seriously WTF is that. Frankly, I find that whole business rather demoralising and that it’s taking the ‘heart’ out of heartfelt, the ‘spirit’ out of spirituality and is ‘prising’ the sanity out of your mind in the name of free enterprise. A key understanding about healing through spirituality is that it is about connectedness. But no one wants real connection…unless it is over wifi.

So I gave up trying.

There is a real woman behind this blog, the book and facebook page. A very imperfect one. And my choice to try this new life, to give in to the yearning and the dreaming, has done some real things.

It released me and it set me free.

Certainly not into some magically whole and healed being…far from it. It has shown me, with ferocious and wrenching truth that the wounds of the abused are not truly able to be healed. The wounding is always a constant. The freedom comes from the acknowledgement of that…in my ability to accept it, and to not be convinced that I will never feel the wrench of its pain again. There is no pretence and pretending that I can meditate, write, sing or dance it away. And I can’t drink it or drug it to death either. I can just truly know it as a part of who I am. I can understand how it has shaped me into the person that I am. And I can be grateful for the things it forced me to learn about myself, life and the universe.

Now, I can openly say, yes I am this person with this anxiety and these depressive tendencies.

I can be angry at the disgusting foul state of humanity and the depravity of the evil side of human nature. I can know that I will be overwhelmed and lost and frankly that it just who I am. This exists as the part of who I am because I was abused. And it is the visceral experience of this darkness that makes my life one filled with colours that are somehow more vibrant and sounds that are louder, and feelings that are far too intense. So, I must cry the tears that I don’t want to shed, because I they make me feel weak and stuck in a past I wished I could erase, but without them I am not the woman who can cry tears because I truly understand and accept that the abused little girl in me will always be the part of me that is the voice of my anger, confusion and overwhelm. She is my humanity. She is my empathy. She is the part of me that connects me to life…she is the light in the dark side of me.

I am the human part of my being as much as I am the spiritual part. And the reality is that often I am more so the sad lost human part. The spiritual part of me, though, eventually charges in on a white unicorn and leads me back to the whole and balanced place where I can rest peacefully and I may even have a sing and a dance while I’m there.

We are all fighting a battle of some kind, right. My logical and rational nature fight with my divine and spiritual nature constantly. My vast creative imagination fights with the reality of daily drudgery. My willingness fights my apathy…..and these are my two great foes.

The will to keep going

The will to overcome

The will to find out if life is worth it

The will to seek more answers

The will to seek more knowledge

The will to start something new

The will to let go of pain and hurt

The will to change my mind

The will to let go

The will to be willing to try…..

I struggle endlessly with humanity itself. As a species, we are completely flawed and broken too. And I cannot fix or save it (and a lot of my anxiety stems from wondering if it is even worth saving or any kind of effort to bother trying.) Because humanity is divinity and evil co-existing in a physical manifestation. Any attempt to divide and conquer is futile. Light will not conquer dark and dark will not conquer light. They exist only because of each other.

That is the essence of what I have learned of late….a deep deep lesson. The willingness to choose. Yes, we all have choices, but we must be willing to make them. I chose to live as the woman who is not defeated by her abuse and strives to find a way to live better with it. Not ashamed or in hiding, but with the acceptance that I am a completely flawed human being and my spiritual connection saves my life and keeps me sane. It is not a saleable commodity. It is my soul’s wisdom.

When you are not willing to look away and look inside and remember your own worth, the goodness and the love in your heart, life becomes a tragedy. Melancholy rules and forgetfulness takes up residence. Acceptance of this state is the only way I can bring peace to myself. Acceptance that only through a state of balance will we find that state of peace and equilibrium we so desperately seek in the here and now of this life.

Accept the good. Accept the bad.

Choose to try to change what is out of balance for you, but do not fall into the apathy that tells you that it is not worth the effort of trying because there will be no winner or loser.

Seek not to conquer or win, seek only what brings you peace from within.

I am restless and weepy and sad and done with this human being life stuff. Be warned…this blog is a part whinge and part feeling sorry for myself today, but this past month has been one of those ‘That’s it, I give up!!’ kind of months.

I feel like a big fat fraud because I literally just launched my book and now I am having drama with the publication of it, so it and I, have gone into a limbo state. It was the biggest bravest thing I have ever done, only to have it feel like I have to keep fighting for its ability to exist. It is like it doesn’t want to be here….even though it already raised $1200 at it’s launch for my chosen charity ‘Restoring Hope” (I know, how good is that, really!)

I wanted to contribute something meaningful to the world, but instead of feeling like the world is grateful for my bravery and contribution, it is just saying…..like, whatever, no one cares lady, who the &*#$ do you think you are anyway.

Today, this month, it just feels too hard. I keep asking myself so many questions this month (wait til you see my new ‘question’ blog…it’s a doozie). The BIG question I am grappling with the most right now is….Why the hell did you write that book??

(I wrote it because it was healing for me…not because I wanted to be a famous author

I wrote it because people said it would help other people…and it really really can.

I wrote it because I felt like the universe itself was trying to push me into doing it.

Cause, now, I am supposed to turn myself into a marketing machine, a self publishing guru, an internet and social media expert, a speaker, a PR person, an ‘authority’, an ‘expert’. I have to keep creating content and make the world try to notice me! Hang on, I just wanted to write stuff!

(Oh, and I am worth noticing, by the way. I’m a pretty nice, cool, funny, interesting, intelligent person. I have had stuff to deal with in my life and I have a way of figuring things out and making sense of that stuff. I have had some really full on stuff happen to me to. Stuff that made me wake up and go ‘Whoa, there’s some stuff going on that I need to understand…you know, energy, spirituality, freedom, rights, empowerment..Stuff like that.)

But then I get days like today(months like last month.) Today is like Throwback Thursday, except Thursday is my entire past. The way that my life has pretty much always been. Full of tension, anxiety and fear. I live with an impending sense of doom. It’s a bit like I am about to get caught doing something REALLY bad and I am going to get into HUGE trouble.

My whole life is like that. Constantly feeling like I am about to get caught out being a BAD BAD girl.

I turned 45 the other day, and you know what; I still spend most of my days trying not to do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing. I always feel like something is going to go wrong and I will be to blame for it. I will be accused of some evil thing or some irresponsible thing or some humiliating thing. Or that everyone will suddenly realise I am not a valid person, I don’t deserve to be alive or that they don’t really like me or…..I don’t know, just bbbllllleeeerrrrrkkkkk!

This is the reality of living with anxiety, depression and PTSD. It is the reality of living life as an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, but trying to be the best version of you at the same time. In the midst of changing my life into something pretty and shiny and meaningful, I constantly battle the part of me that didn’t want to do it in the first place.

Because you know that all those things I just said, about being a caught out, or doing or saying the wrong thing; being a BAD girl; that is all the little girl who was abused still ruling (and ruining) my emotional landscape.We battle to be in charge, and a lot of the time, she wins. Her fear is stronger than my knowledge.

I battle that constant need to run away, to surrender, to give up. I get angry when I feel myself failing and then angrier for letting the victim-hood sneak back in and make me feel crappy all over again. I tell myself that I just wrote this awesome book all about how to ‘thrive’ in your life, how you can heal your terrible childhood bruises, that it is all a part of a divine challenge for your soul and that you can become more whole and empowered by entering into the darkness and learning its depths and wisdom…..until suddenly I am scared again

Scared of being noticed, scared of NOT being noticed. Scared of having a voice and using my voice. Scared of what happens after that. What if it’s nothing, what if it’s something, what if it is everything? Scared about ‘What do I do now.”

Anxiety bbbblllleeerrrkkkk!! Even when I KNOW better…..

I KNOW that our pain and suffering teach us about ourselves.

I KNOW that I am wiser and stronger for not hiding from it

I KNOW I can cope with its tricks

I KNOW it will pass

But, I also KNOW:

It sucks when it is here.

It doesn’t actually ever really go away entirely.

It will always find a new way to trick me, hurt me and confuse me.

Confound me, compound me and astound me.

But…this is life, as a human being.

That’s why I looked for different ways, different options and different perspectives.

Cause it has never made sense to me…this being a human being business.

In this world of awakened consciousness it seems like every day there are new modalities, healings, processes and methods of ‘shedding your shit’, ‘manifesting abundance’ or ‘revealing your greater being.’ We are being promised that with ‘hard work’ and ‘dedication’ to self improvement, we can reach higher and higher states of awarenessand empowerment.

But what if you are already pretty self aware. What if you have done a lot of inner work already and what if one of these methods is in fact very much the wrong method for you?

Most practitioners are well meaning, trained in their chosen method and wholeheartedly believe that they are there for your well being. But often there are ahidden percentage of people for whom the work can be damaging. Their disclaimers of not being therapists, lawyers, doctors etc, essentially means there is an element to the work that can potentially be harmful, or else why the disclaimer? Of course the answer is that they can’t be responsible for how an individual may react, misinterpret or fail to complete the ‘work’ or ‘course’ or ‘process’.

I write this today as a veteran of the self help world who has had some bad experiences. For example, I undertook a process once that was designed to show me the benefits and gains of my most desired and despised traits and show me how to bring equilibrium to my life. Halt the fantasies that are stopping me from achieving my greatest life and become grateful for the shadow aspects of my being.

Now let me say, I think that the premise is a valid one. I am a huge advocate of understanding the importance of the shadow side of life and see our existence as a manifestation of these energetic principles. The laws of quantum physics. I am there. I get it.

What I am not ‘there’ for is the potential damage that comes from the brutality of any mentally torturous process that is delivered on the premise that we are ‘re-writing our neural pathways’. The concept of being forced into a ‘collapse’ so that you can‘re-awaken’ in gratitude is the stuff of brainwashing and cults. Being told that in order to evolve and discover our greatest selves, we must divest ourselves of the death grip of our subconscious mind and see ourselves as mindless robots that are in a loop of a reactionary/stationary drive because we are so locked inside our programming may indeed be a great theory. But, and it is a BIG but; it is how we then decide we should try to change that programming that becomes a crucial decision. If you are on the personal development road, collapsing is something we can do all on our own, without the help of any other red hot pokers to antagonise us.

Once I again I will say that some of this stuff is true. We do need to wrestle with our subconscious and rewire our neural pathways. It is possible and it is beneficial. My point is aboutthe way that this is done. Each individual needs to know for themselves the best way to challenge the shadows and dark of their lives. If, like me, you suffered some trauma and in particular you have ever been seriously suicidal, I encourage you to be very very cautious about allowing yourself to be subjected to so-called healing methods that put you through a brutal and torturous mental process.

I learnt a few years ago something that I didn’t really know before I began my healing journey (in fact was so scared by the fact that I thought that healing would be a torturous journey I did not want to start) But, healing can be gentle. You are allowed to use gentle methods. Methods which are loving, enlightening and nurturing. It doesn’t mean there won’t be tears and sadness or that you won’t feel angry, even enraged as you walk along transformations path. But you have choices.

Look, you may be the type who is prepared to swing on the frayed rope over the pit of tar and snakes, to reach the jagged cliffs on the other side. You might then climb with bloodied feet ready to battle the fire breathing dragon who is blocking the path to your own souls enlightenment, only to reach the top, triumphant, the first to raise your fist as the king or queen of mighty self empowerment. Congratulations, you are the cleverest of clever super-powered personal development ninja’s…but are you sure you even know what you just did, how you even got there and if any of it is going to last?

Maybe, you are more like me, prepared to take the slow walk around the valley, discovering the hidden secrets of self and gently exploring each region, happy to arrive at my destination with my two feet on the ground, full of knowledge and wisdom, feeling peaceful as I sit in the gentle shining light of my own version of self empowerment.

Maybe before you sign up for your next seminar or workshop, you should stop and decide if you really truly need it, or if you already have the answers you need inside of you. If you are a follower of mine you will know what I think….meditate on it first.

Maybe you just need to take a long walk in the sunshine, feel into the moment and realise that you are actually ok as you are right now. You are enough. The only thing you are not enough of, is secure in your idea of what enough ‘you’ looks like to everyone else. And you know what, sometimes I say….screw ‘em, I am fine with me just the way I AM.

It occurredto me today that I have been sharing some of my thoughts and poems with you, but some of you may not really know who I am.

I am Megan Freeland. I’m an ordinary Aussie girl. I am married to a great guy Scott, who I call Freed. I have an almost 9 year old daughter, Trinity, and a fluffy little pup, named Ruby, that I call Moo, Mooey, or moo moo moo moo.

Why am I filling up your Facebook with my stuff? Well a couple of years ago I had an epiphany after my dad died. A few years before that, I had a full on spiritual awakening, and many years before that, when I was a little girl, I was sexually abused.

So, that epiphany I had a couple of years ago led to me writing a book…..The Magic and The Mire.

It’s about spirituality and sexual abuse. So, do you see where I am coming from?

The Magic, that was my spiritual awakening

The Mire, that was my sexual abuse.

The action out of the epiphany; quit my job, write a book and share my story.

Writing is the way I channel my thoughts about the world, the universe and my kind spirituality. This is the way my soul likes to express its stuff through the lens of my ego; which is direct, honest, compassionate, sensitive and a likes a joke.

So this is me, following my soul’s purpose. Sometimes it is very deep, beautiful and inspiring. Sometimes I am blessed to be able to write divinely inspiring or darkly expressive poetry. Other times, I like to write about how much I struggle with anxiety and depression or I will share insights about my spiritual understandings and experiences.

I hope that the things I post inspire you or are informative, helpful, thought provoking or at least interesting. I also hope that if you want to know more about me, how I cope with my sexual abuseand learnt to integrate it and how I try with all my might to live a spiritually aligned life, you might like to read my book. It aims to break the silencewe have around sexual abuse, but is also aims to be heartfelt, challenging and inspiring.

Oh, and I am especially passionate about meditation, I can be fierce about women’s empowerment and I advocate speaking out about stuff you think should change in the world. I revere the divine lightinside us, but know that the shadow sideof life is just as relevant and important. I won’t shy away from talking about it either…and I like to laugh as much as I can.